In Other RPG News…

Runic Games sent out a press release late last week, trumpeting their recent milestone as Torchlight went platinum, selling over one-million copies for the PC and Xbox combined. Congrats to Max, Erich, Matt, Peter, and everyone else at Runic Games for the achievement. There’s no official release date for Torchlight 2 yet, as it’s following in the footsteps of Diablo II by adding a million features and thus taking longer than anticipated to produce, but they are planning to reveal the fourth and final character sometime before PAX, where they will be exhibiting the upcoming ARPG sequel.

Elsewhere, the alpha test for Path of Exile is continuing (I’ve been playing, but can’t really talk about it yet.) and the game is progressing very nicely, with big new patches full of bug fixes plus lots of added content/features rolling out almost weekly. The Templar, the fifth of the six character classes, was just revealed with a snazzy new gameplay movie that’s turned into a storytelling presentation by a gritty voice over narration.

You can check out a half dozen new high res PoE screenshots that accompanied the Templar announcement, and view his new movie below. You can even get a high res 720px version of the movie, if you want to swing the download. Beta test signups for this upcoming free ARPG remain available; you’ve just got to create a forum account on the Path of Exile site.

Update: I should have mentioned that I interviewed the Path of Exile guys in person during their first press activities when they announced the game back in 2010. My very long write up of the game can be seen in a post from then, and the full interview transcript is on IncGamers in two parts.

Update #2: A gameplay movie with no narration/story/slow motion can be seen here, if you want just gameplay action. These movies are accurate representations of what it looks/plays like, based on my alpha test experiences thus far.